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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22821109">A Tender Beauty</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/madeinessos/pseuds/madeinessos'>madeinessos</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Abuse of Authority, Age Difference, Dom/sub, F/F, Jewelry, Light Sadism, Loss of Virginity, Necklaces, Necks, Object Insertion, Older Woman/Younger Woman, Power Imbalance, Treat</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 12:14:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,663</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22821109</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/madeinessos/pseuds/madeinessos</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a face which some gentle-hearted goddess might concede to wear – might be delighted to wear, even. The queen’s beautiful smile would coax anyone into loosening their grip on their daggers, into leaning back in trust.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Wicked Queen/Her Virgin Princess Bride</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>123</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Chocolate Box - Round 5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Tender Beauty</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingbutregret/gifts">nothingbutregret</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The wedding was deemed a success.</p><p>The court painters, drunk with love songs and with the spice-laden, laughter-spun air, put to paper a glowing account of the High Table. Froths of flowers, red and pink. The glimmer of gemstones. The glint of precious thread. At the centre of the table a thick beeswax candle, unlighted, beribboned with a strip of embroidered cloth, and anointed with temple oils. The queen’s slender hand, heavy with golden rings, a green vein peeking past her wrist, holding aloft a red date dipped in honey. Her young bride the princess consort catching the gift with a shy plump smile.</p><p>The court painters sighed dreamily. The queen was a favourite amongst them.</p><p>On the portrait they recorded her with adoring brushstrokes, with meticulous mixing of paint. They had no trouble with integrity since the queen looked just so in person as she did in canvas, if not better.</p><p>For the queen had a most lovely smile. Soft and soothing, that smile, almost kind. A wide, full-lipped wonder. It was sat perfectly on her oval face. The astonishing symmetry of her features; the gentle rise of her cheekbones; the healthy glow of her pale olive skin, which was a tricky shade to replicate in paint, somewhere between ivory and gold and dun; her warm dark eyes; the twinkle of a diamond on her broad nose; and the elegant coils of black braids – all of these would coax anyone into loosening their grip on their daggers, into leaning back in trust.</p><p>It was a face which some gentle-hearted goddess might concede to wear – might be delighted to wear, even. A goddess of peace or harvest or trade, all of which, by happy coincidence, the queen had already brought to them many years ago.</p><p>A kind face, the court painters crooned. A tender beauty.</p><p>*</p><p>Havva smiled at her young bride and said, “I have a gift for you, my sweet.”</p><p>The fire in the grate was healthy. Somewhat cooled by the night, the dry summer air was drifting in from the tower’s open window. Her princess consort had a woollen veil draped about her shoulders, over her silken nightdress, yet Havva still noticed her sinking and curling her toes into the lush rug. Havva still noticed her shiver.</p><p>“Another gift?” her bride said. She gave her arms a quick rub. She smiled; it quivered on her lips, a tremulous thing.</p><p>This pleased Havva. Immensely so.</p><p>“Yes, my sweet Maryam. Another gift.”</p><p>On the table between them was a small cedar box. Havva lifted its carved lid and, out from it, lifted a small golden necklace. In the half-light the necklace gleamed warmly. Twinkled enticingly. It was a necklace of dainty golden chains and tiny teardrop diamonds.</p><p>Maryam’s eyes widened. Her lips parted slightly, plump and glistening. She put a hand on her chest.</p><p>“Only the best for my sweet,” said Havva.</p><p>Her bride was a daughter of the fertile river valley. She had been a child of luxuries, a spoiled pampered thing. Songs called her a jewel, a treasure, a prize. Such vanities were only natural for such a lady, one who had been born and bred a princess.</p><p>And how fortunate, wasn’t it, that bestowing gifts and spoiling favourites gave Havva so much pleasure.</p><p>How fortunate, no?</p><p>“My queen has a lovely laugh,” Maryam said, gathering her fall of tight black curls over one shoulder. Undressing her neck for Havva’s gift.</p><p>Havva didn’t respond. Instead she ambled round the table. She ruled over the desert <em>and</em> the river valley now; she could keep japes to herself.</p><p>So she just admired the warm brown nape of her bride. Would it be tender, or stiff? She ran a contemplative knuckle from the base of the nape, over the small mole on a corner of the hairline, to the skin behind Maryam’s ear.</p><p>And back down. And back up.</p><p>And, slowly, back down.</p><p>Such satiny skin. Sumptuous. Unblemished.</p><p>Of course, in the end, all napes were brittle. All throats.</p><p>Havva pressed her thumb on the skin behind Maryam’s ear. She caressed it, her strokes slow, firm. “Have you ever been kissed here, my sweet?”</p><p>“No.” Maryam’s voice quivered, ever so slightly.</p><p>Havva’s other fingers ghosted over the underside of her bride’s jaw, whisper-light and insinuating, drinking in Maryam’s two thick gulps. Havva loved the cool beginnings of soft fleshly quivering trapped in her suggestion of a fist, like a fish out of water, desperately gasping and contorting, or like a fluttering cornered bird. Why, if she pressed harder she might feel the thrum of her bride’s pulse, the throb of her sweet’s heart – but that was for later. Delaying pleasure gave Havva pleasure as well.</p><p>“You tremble,” Havva noted, idly.</p><p>“It’s only the cold, my queen.”</p><p>“How curious. My chambers are warm.” Havva glanced at the chains and diamonds on her other hand. Warmth was trickling into a molten pool, low in her belly. “Take off your nightdress.”</p><p>Maryam shifted on the chair. Her toes were tight little balls lost in the red-dyed rug.</p><p>“Undress, wife.” Havva brushed a knuckle down her Maryam’s smooth cheek, and smiled. The sweet thing must have thought that she would get to wear the necklace right away. Presumptuous, wasn’t she. Greedy, wasn’t she. Havva added, “Or shall I do it for you?”</p><p>Just as Havva had disrobed and ravished her bride’s then-kingdom?</p><p>Maryam set her jaw and swallowed. Then she stood, clutching her veil to her chest as one would clutch prayer beads.</p><p>Yet for several moments she only stood there, quite frozen. Even her gaze was frozen, held hostage by Havva’s small smile, as though – and this was the most delicious thing – she was wavering between running away or else not daring to let Havva slip from her sights. “Please,” and her tongue darted out to wet her lower lip, “please, my queen.”</p><p>The air was redolent with her sweet Maryam’s apprehension. Havva took in a healthy lungful, the corners of her lips tipped up.</p><p>“Very well,” she indulged. “I will tell my sweet what to do.”</p><p>A few strides away from the circular table, there was the bed, plumped with the softest of cotton sheets and piled high with cushions encased in satin. Havva sat on it, stretching her legs luxuriously on the floor and crossing her ankles; the folds of her own nightdress, as green as a canopy, as green as a snake, those watery silk folds caressing the tops of her thighs in promise. Then she tilted her head consideringly.</p><p>With her eyes she took an appetiser’s sip of her bride.</p><p>Maryam, soaked in warm tones in this half-light. Maryam, her shapely prize. Maryam, her well-chosen fruit. A mane of tight black curls to sink Havva’s fingers into, to yank, to steer. A heart-shaped face that was by turns fragile and stubborn. As Havva surveyed her sweet’s large eyes, grey as a stone just beneath the river’s surface and framed with thick lashes, she wondered if her Maryam could now glimpse her beneath her smile, if the girl could <em>see</em> her behind her famed beauty. Havva liked to think so.</p><p>Otherwise, this delicious billowing air would thin. Otherwise, there would be no dread.</p><p>That shapeless sense of dread, inexplicable and skulking behind the consciousness, eluding her sweet Maryam’s grasp, was more intoxicating than the richest wine.</p><p>Havva loved watching it flit through her bride’s eyes.</p><p>She wondered how soon she could scoop it. How much longer she would wait before she could swirl it around her mouth. Perhaps she might lick it down one soft, dark cheek.</p><p>“Now, my sweet,” Havva began with a smile, “the veil.”</p><p>A pause. A trifle.</p><p>“Oh, none of that.” Havva tutted. “Stop shaking your head. I said, none of that. Stop that. You don’t disobey my commands. You know of wedding nights, and I am your queen. You will do as I say. I will give you another gift, look.”</p><p>“Please, my queen, I – I’ve changed my mind. I want –”</p><p>“None of that, I said.” Havva uncrossed and recrossed her ankles. “You see, you couldn’t seem to decide earlier. So, then. I shall tell you what to do and you needn’t worry about it. You just obey, my sweet.”</p><p>*</p><p>Maryam’s aunt blew a perfect ring of smoke. “She will be pleased with you, that she will. And I promised her you will be pleasing. Put flowers in her hair,” she added to the handmaidens dressing Maryam for the wedding.</p><p>Maryam nodded, said nothing.</p><p>She focused on her aunt's lips, instead: forming the words, painted a deep plum, and blowing out purplish smoke.</p><p>“She wanted a maid, you see,” her aunt went on, blowing out two more rings, “a virgin. Be grateful that she wants you, Maryam, even after that mishap in the temple a few years back. A wedding! Instead of a hanging! Be grateful, Maryam, child. And what even possessed you to do that, really, I still cannot understand. I think I could never. Trying to scream the rafters down, with her soldiers having already smashed the doors – ah, no matter. Be obedient now. And she is very easy to look at, very easy indeed, so you can count that as another blessing. You are a blessed one, Maryam, you hear? A blessed one, after all. Try to smile. She is stunning, too. Do not forget to bring her these temple oils for the marital candle. She will know what to do with the candle. You just obey her. I told her you could be an obedient princess.”</p><p>*</p><p>And, with tightened knuckles, Maryam started to obey. She started to remove the woollen veil draped round her shoulders.</p><p>“No, no – slowly. Slowly, now. Down your shoulders, let it slide against you, that’s it. Very good. Oh, very good. Down to your elbows. As I would embrace you.” Havva favoured her with a soft smile. “Now drop it.”</p><p>It pooled at Maryam’s feet.</p><p>“Now, my sweet. Come closer.”</p><p>Her bride did that slowly as well, at Havva’s direction, though the entire time she was taking those seven halting steps, she kept her eyes on the necklace looped around Havva’s hand.</p><p>“Very good.” Still smiling, Havva uncrossed her ankles to make room. “Come sit here, my sweet.”</p><p>Maryam’s nightdress was all silk, lace, and ribbons. A foam of creamy milk. Havva gathered a fistful of it, gently, and through this crumpled ball she rubbed circles on her bride’s waist. She was neither light nor heavy, this bride; she was a rigid weight perched on Havva’s knee.</p><p>“Let’s make you comfortable,” murmured Havva, moving her hand from Maryam’s waist to low on Maryam’s nape. She pulled loose the string there, and gratifyingly the shoulders of the silken nightdress breathed a sigh. Havva retraced the loosened neckline with her thumbnail: from Maryam’s nape, round her polished brown shoulder kissed by a wayward curl, and at last the point between her collarbones. Havva leaned forward and softly pressed her lips there, beside her slowly digging fingernail, whilst she secured her bride firmly on her lap with her other hand, the chains and diamonds looped around it scraping against the foam of creamy milk. Against her lips, Maryam’s chest was falling fast, rising faster.</p><p>“Would you like to have your gift, my sweet?”</p><p>A shiver ran through Maryam. She took her bottom lip between her teeth, the tease, before nodding and saying, “Please.”</p><p>“Well, then. Pull your arms out.”</p><p>Slowly, Maryam obeyed.</p><p>Afterwards, the froth of silk and lace slipped off her heavy breasts, past her hardened nipples, and down her soft belly, and finally settling on the swell of her hips.</p><p>Half-bared like this, kissed by the half-light, Maryam was beautiful. Sweet as honey. Her eyes were wide, and this close to her, Havva could see some moisture caught in those thick lashes. This made Havva hum with pleasure.</p><p>She leaned even closer as she clasped the short necklace round her bride’s neck. Havva took her time. And under her fingertips, thick swishes, wild throbbing. Maryam’s pulse was thundering in her throat, now made prettier with the teardrop diamonds and delicately wrought golden chains. The bottom swell of the diamonds brushed against Maryam’s collarbones.</p><p>“It looks so lovely on you,” Havva said, sliding a hand up Maryam’s thigh.</p><p>Maryam squirmed in her lap, but Havva quickly slipped past the bunched up silk and lace, and stopped just at the top of her bride’s inner thigh. Oh, the flesh up here, so soft and supple, and so warm – so very near the heat of her cunt.</p><p>“I – I –”</p><p>“Does it feel lovely, your gift?” said Havva, giving this spot of flesh a squeeze, hard, full of the bite of blunt fingernails. With her other hand, she gripped Maryam by the nape.</p><p>Maryam flinched, and clung to Havva’s shoulders.</p><p>Her lips were slightly parted. When she squirmed again, her dainty hands digging into Havva’s shoulders, Havva slid up further and with two fingers firmly, slowly, rubbed up Maryam’s cunt lips.</p><p>Maryam quivered. A broken keen tumbled past her lips, almost shocked, almost frightened. Such a sweet little thing. Her bare toes were cold against the top of Havva’s foot.</p><p>“Does it not feel lovely?” Havva murmured. She dipped the tip of her finger into her bride. She was met with a confused squeeze, a delicious fluttering.</p><p>Havva slipped it out.</p><p>And promptly dragged it against Maryam’s pleasure nub. Hard, slowly. Soft, slowly. Hard and hard, and soft and hard. In tight circles. Tightly. Slowly. Squeeze her nape, and lightly tug at the necklace, let the diamonds scrape against her fluttering pulse, and one more slow. Tight. Oh, tight. Rub on her nub.</p><p>“It – it feels – <em>oh, oh</em> –”</p><p>“It’s supposed to feel this way,” Havva told her in gentle tones. “This is supposed to happen.”</p><p>Havva bent down, closed her lips around a hard nipple, sucked with teeth. Slid a finger all the way into her bride's tight little cunt.</p><p>Her sweet Maryam let out a sob.</p><p>“Oh, my sweet, you like this.” Havva let out a light laugh. “This is supposed to happen, even your body knows that. Look at you, you’re wet. Look at how wet you’re getting.” She slipped in another finger. Stroked deeper, rubbed harder. “Very good. You’d need this.”</p><p>Maryam’s hips were either grinding back or stuttering away. Not that Havva cared. For Maryam’s arms were slung over her shoulders, and Maryam’s uneven damp breaths clung to Havva's cheek, and her soft body, trembling and enclosed in Havva’s arms, was a treasure. A ripe fruit ready for her dripping teeth. The molten wetness had long since spread all over Havva's loins, leaving her soaked deliciously.</p><p>She sucked on Maryam’s bottom lip. “Do you know why you’d need it?”</p><p>Maryam shook her head. Sweat was beading on her temples and above her upper lip.</p><p>“Under that pillow is our candle. Do you remember our candle, my sweet? Anointed with temple oils and prayers? I shall fuck you with it.”</p><p>Maryam bucked in her lap, moaning, but Havva squeezed her nape, pulled her necklace in warning.</p><p>Maryam let out a tight gasp.</p><p>Havva looked forward to hearing her make wet clacking songs.</p><p>“You just take it, my sweet. It’d be so lovely, you will see. This is supposed to happen. Our candle will stretch your little cunt so good. You can cry all you want, you can even scream, you can even try to pull away, as long as you take it. If you kicked me, I’m afraid I would have to beat your cunt and you wouldn’t want that just before the candle, do you.”</p><p>“No,” whispered Maryam.</p><p>Havva gently smiled. She pecked Maryam on the lips, and curled her fingers in Maryam's sopping cunt. “Do you want to climax before the candle?”</p><p>“I – I –”</p><p>“Say yes. You would feel so good, my sweet Maryam. Take it as another gift from me. You know that I love giving you gifts, sweetest.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong> <em>fin</em> </strong>
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